Storm chasers dropping 120lb. instrument pods in paths of tornados

Researchers want a detailed look at a tornado—from the inside.

An international team of scientists is prowling the Great Plains this spring, hoping to catch the most detailed glimpse inside a tornado yet. And they're giving daily updates of where they're hunting on their website.

The project is called ROTATE 2012 (Radar Observations of Tornadoes and Thunderstorms Experiment), and it's being run by the Center for Severe Weather Research, which is based in Boulder, Colorado and funded in part by the National Science Foundation. The CSWR has three "Doppler-on-wheels" (DOW) vehicles, which are mobile versions of the advanced radars that track air movement and precipitation.

The team will also be using a set of 22 instrument pods that can be dropped in front of oncoming tornadoes. "The instruments may be destroyed," the CSWR notes, but any data they obtain will be stored in a black box that can be recovered afterwards. The plan is to record as much information about the inside of tornadoes as possible, providing a clearer glimpse of how they form, the forces in action as they grow, and the precise mechanisms by which they wreck just about anything in their path.

If any of you are in the area under study (So far, the team has tracked fronts from South Dakota to New Mexico), the team posts daily updates of their activity, including maps that will tell you where they've been hunting. The photo at the top of this article was taken near Rango, Kansas, where several tornadoes were tracked.